The plot of The Old Man and the Sea fits on a napkin. An old Cuban fisherman, Santiago, has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. He rows far out alone, hooks an enormous marlin, fights it for two days and two nights, and kills it. On the way home, sharks eat it. He arrives with a skeleton tied to his boat and goes to sleep.
Hemingway published it in 1952. It won the Pulitzer Prize the next year and was part of the reason he received the Nobel Prize in 1954. It is short enough to read in an evening and heavy enough to carry for a lifetime.
The boy who stayed
At the start of the story, Santiago is considered unlucky. The boy Manolin, who used to fish with him, has been sent by his parents to a luckier boat. But the boy keeps coming back: he brings the old man food, carries his gear, talks with him about baseball.
That friendship is the quiet heart of the book. The world has judged Santiago by his results. The boy judges him by who he is. Most of us need at least one person like that, and most of us can be that person for someone.
Respect for what fights you
Out at sea, Santiago talks to the fish. He calls it his brother. He admires its strength and dignity even while he is trying to kill it. There is no hatred in the struggle, only effort and respect.
This is a rare way of looking at difficulty. We usually treat our problems as enemies or as insults. Santiago treats the marlin as something worthy of him. The size of the struggle becomes a measure of the man.
The sharks
Then the sharks come. First a mako, then others. Santiago fights them with a harpoon, then with a knife tied to an oar, then with a club. He knows he cannot win. He fights anyway. It is in this part that he says the sentence the book is remembered for.
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
It is easy to quote and hard to live. Destruction is what the world can do to you: take your catch, your money, your health, your country. Defeat is something you agree to inside. Santiago loses the fish. He does not agree to be defeated.
Think of what you can do
Earlier, alone in the boat, he gives himself advice that sounds almost like a proverb: now is no time to think of what you do not have, think of what you can do with what there is.
Anyone who has started again in a new country, after an illness, or after a failure, knows this discipline. You stop comparing your boat to other boats. You look at the rope in your hands.
The skeleton on the beach
At the end, tourists see the marlin’s skeleton in the water and do not understand what it is. The village fishermen do. They measure it and know what the old man did.
Results are what strangers see. Effort is what those who know you see. The book does not pretend that effort is enough to win. It only insists that effort, courage and respect are ours, and that the sharks cannot eat them.
Santiago sleeps, and dreams of lions on a beach in Africa, the dream he had as a young man. The book does not tell us whether he will catch another fish. It tells us he is still himself.
